Blog - Remembaryhttp://remembary.com/blog/Mon, 27 Jul 2015 11:42:29 +0000en-CASite-Server v6.0.0-5012-5012 (http://www.squarespace.com)What's Up With Remembary?Andrew BurkeMon, 27 Jul 2015 11:41:54 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2015/7/27/whats-up-with-remembary50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:55b615f3e4b08c832d6f6a2a(This is a shortened version of a blog post found at http://www.shindigital.com/blogposts/102)

Remembary is a big part of my life. I use it almost every day. It contains over a decade of my diary entries, half of them copied in from my handwritten journals. It's the way that I reconnect to my past and think about the future.

The last update deployed to the App Store was on January 24, 2014. This is over a year and a half ago. The version in the store hasn't been updated for iOS8 - it hasn't even been updated for iOS7. Why is that? Don't I care about my own software?

I actually care a lot. I care so much that I want to produce the best, most stable and reliable product that I can. I've also been working on the app quite a bit since the last update - in fact, I've dedicated entire months and have even turned down paying work to get Remembary updated for the latest iOS features.

So why is Remembary still an iOS6 app?

The full-time job that pays $30/week

The first thing to know is that, contrary to common perception, it's very difficult to make a living in the App Store. Remembary frequently shows up in "Top Grossing" charts, but averages about $30 to $50 a week. Some weeks it makes no money at all. Even when the app has been featured on nationwide TV or newspapers, the resulting spike in sales, which is enough to push it to #1 on some charts, only lasts a few days and totals to about $400.

I realized early on that Remembary wasn't likely to make me rich and I've been okay with that. Building and selling and promoting and supporting a product is an amazing experience and has been great for me professionally in terms of building up my portfolio and my reputation. It's also deeply satisfying to know that something I've made is used by people every day to record and reflect upon their lives.

That said, I have to approach Remembary like an indie musician or an amateur novelist: I'm creating something that some people might love, but the odds of making much money from it are very small. I have to do it for the pure passion of it.

... and I have to do something else to put food on the table.

Keeping up with all the changes in iOS every year, especially over the last few years with the introduction of "flat design" in iOS7 and all the new APIs and even new languages in iOS8 and iOS9, can be a full-time job, but since it only pays a fraction of what it takes to make a living, I have to take on other paying work and try to find the time to work on Remembary in the gaps between other projects and commitments.

Updating for iOS7 - then iOS8

The biggest change with iOS7 was new constraint-based layout and a new aesthetic approach based on thinner fonts and a flatter look. With iOS8 this became even more important, especially with the rumours of multiple-sized devices and even split-screen support coming down the pipeline. This was all exciting, but it would require completely rebuilding and rethinking every single UI component in the application - over 16 screens worth of sometimes quite complex layouts.

A favourite feature of the app is the over a dozen bit-perfect full-screen themes with rich textures and subtle details like watermarks and frayed edges. Not only did this not fit with the new aesthetic, but I'm still figuring out the best way to scale or resize these images to work with split and variable-sized displays.

In the summer of 2014, I cleared my work schedule and turned down paying work for over a month to finally dig in and get Remembary up to date. iOS8 was now in the pipeline and I had heard that it supported many new enhanced rich text features. Rich text (bold, italic, underline, colour, and embedded images) would obviously be a great feature for a diary app - many competing apps had tried to support rich text through allowing Markdown or HTML tags, but this wasn't WYSIWYG, which I consider to be of prime importance in any modern app, especially an iOS app.

I started doing research and it turns out that while iOS8 did support new rich text features, they were only "easier and more powerful" in comparison to the earlier versions of iOS, where you had to build your own rendering engine essentially from scratch.

What little documentation available seemed to assume that one was already an expert in text-rendering technology, but I finally managed to make some solid progress. Remembary could now support rich text of various kinds, finally users would be able to emphasize parts of their text. However, I quickly ran into problems: assigning italic or bold doesn't work for all fonts - the custom handwriting and typewriter fonts that I had included in Remembary and which were some of the most popular features of the app often only had regular modes. This makes sense - Jane Austen never needed a bold version of her handwriting, and you would need a whole new typewriter if you wanted to use italics on a vintage Underwood - but it was a big frustration for me in Remembary. If a user added bold and italic to regular text and then switched to a font that didn't support those features, the highlights would be clobbered and they would stay gone if they went back to their original font. This was unacceptable behaviour for a diary app!

So after all of those weeks of work, I pared it back to only support underline, which works for any font and is still valuable as a means of highlighting text. Not as fancy as I had hoped, but still useful.

No new feature goes unpunished

However, rich text also automatically supports embedded images. At first I thought this would a great feature: users could tap on the pictures from that day to add them directly into their diary, mixed in with the text. Building this took some work and it ran a little slowly, but it was an exciting breakthrough and it looked great. But adding images turned out to have all sorts of cascading problems:

exporting the diary into a backup data format to be re-imported elsewhere was now much more complicated since Remembary now had to store potentially megabytes of embedded binary data along with the diary text.

even worse, the natural thing to try to do with text that has image support is to copy and paste images into it from elsewhere, or take copy this mixed content and paste it into an email or a Pages document or some other environment. Considering that this is something that people have been able to do in Mac OS since the 1980s, I assumed that this was a mature, solved problem. It turns out that every program has to build its own custom data format for copying and pasting anything more complicated than plain text.

I happened to be sharing an office at the time with one of the best iOS development shops in the country, and I got one of their top developers to take a look at this rich text / copy-paste situation. His analysis included phrases such as "this is definitely non-trivial," "I can't guarantee that when pasting from other apps everything will work properly," and, "this might be something that you have to wrestle with every time a new version of iOS comes out, possibly even minor revisions."

Remember, working on Remembary is a part-time job that pays far below minimum wage.

Soon after this, a new high-paying gig came up and, having run out of money, I had no choice but to take it.

The Future - Remembary 3.0 (or at least Remembary 2.9)

The heavy lifting part of the new gig is finally wrapping up and I'm starting to find myself with some extra time on my hands - time I hope to start dedicating to Remembary.

The new iCloud Photo Library is a perfect for Remembary, with almost instant access to any pictures in your library without having to take up dozens of gigabytes in your machine. The preliminary tests of Remembary with this new library are encouraging - although, once again, the only tutorials that I could find explaining how the new APIs work had bugs in them that made them crash when I tested them on my device.

So, I'm still working on Remembary. The dreams of an earth-shattering 3.0 release with full rich media support have gone up in smoke, but I am aiming for a simpler update which at least uses the newer layout frameworks and obvious APIs like the new photo library.

The best way to maintain a living iOS application is regular updates, adding small features every few weeks or so. The major changes required for iOS7 broke that pattern and I'm still trying to pick up the pieces before new versions of the OS break things even more. The next update should at least get Remembary on a proper foundation so I can move forward with more frequent updates in future.

I'm still using Remembary every day, like I have for five years. I plan to continue doing so for many more.

]]>Typing In Remembary: Three iPad Keyboards ReviewedAndrew BurkeSun, 02 Jun 2013 15:47:00 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2013/6/2/typing-in-remembary-three-ipad-keyboards-reviewed50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:51ab53ade4b04c1c5aabd332While Remembary gives you lots of extra context for your diary's entry, it's still built around the core idea of WRITING about each day. The act of writing helps you reflect on and understand your day differently from just reading about it. Even with helpful features like voice dictation and tapping to copy your Tweets or Facebook statuses into your diary, you'll probably be spending a lot of time typing into the app.

Some people are able to type with the iPad's on-screen keyboard very quickly and accurately. However, if you're used to regular keyboards, and especially if you're a touch-typist, then the lack of physical feedback can make it frustrating. Also, to save space the on-screen keyboard requires modifier keys to access commonly used characters like & and $. It doesn't have easy navigation keys either, and reaching out to tap on the iPad isn't very accurate with smaller fonts.

Because of this, quite a market has grown to help you type on your iPad. Here are three different things I've tried, and what I think of them.

Apple Bluetooth Keyboard (w/ Origami Case)

This is an iconic Apple design that has been around since 2007. It's rugged and beautiful, and the full-size keys make it a pleasure to type with. I already had one of these keyboards when the iPad came out and one of the first things I did when I got it home was pair them up.

The fact that the iPad and the keyboard are completely separate has its pros and cons. You can put the iPad on a stand at eye level while keeping the keyboard down at a better position for your hands, for example. On the other hand, it can sometimes be awkward if you're sitting on a couch or in bed, or are otherwise in cramped conditions: you have to find *two* ergonomically correct resting places.

There's one big problem I've had with this Apple keyboard: I think it was designed as a space-saving desktop item, not as a travel accessory. It has a large power button on the side which is very exposed and easy to hit as you're putting the keyboard into a bag. This not only turns on the keyboard but can wake up your iPad as well and drain batteries on both. If they've both been turned on and something in your bag jostles the music control keys at the top of the keyboard, your bag might suddenly start playing music while you're walking down the street. The first time it happened to me I was in a hotel corridor when the soundtrack to Inception suddenly started playing - quite scary until I figured out what was happening!

Also, instead of being a simple on/off switch, the button has to be held down for a while to turn off. This is supposed to take five seconds, but I've been using this keyboard for years and it *still* takes me several tries to actually turn it off correctly.

The best solution I've found for these problems is the InCase Origami Workstation. It wraps around and protects your keyboard, making it much less likely for buttons and keys to be pressed accidentally. When you want to type, it cleverly folds back and velcros into a nice stand. The whole combination looks like a laptop when the iPad is in landscape mode, but it's even nicer in portrait mode - I like seeing Remembary's book themes at their full height. Typing on a long screen makes it feel more like a piece of paper or a book, too (and reminds me a bit of Apple's early Macintosh inspiration, the Xerox Alto).

I kept a handwritten diary for years before I started Remembary, and over the years I've been gradually typing in all of my old entries (at least the ones where I can read my handwriting!). I've found the Origami also makes a great book stand for transcription:

Touchfire Keyboard

The Apple keyboard is nice, but it's an extra thing to have to carry around with you, and with the case it takes up almost as much volume as the iPad itself. For those who want to travel light, or who only occasionally need to do heavy typing, there's the really cool Touchfire Keyboard.

The Touchfire isn't a standalone keyboard, but instead it's a clear cover that fits over your iPad and gives the virtual keyboard a physical presence. It's just a thin piece of silicone rubber, so it takes up virtually no space, especially when it's folded up. It has built-in magnets that lock it into place, and which can even help it stow away inside a Smart Cover.

I was given a Touchfire keyboard while I was at a conference last year and it turned out to be great for taking presentation notes. It greatly improved my typing while still letting me just keep the iPad on my lap. However, when I settled into my hotel room that night to write in my diary, I found I much preferred using a full-sized 'real' keyboard.

Also, the rubbery silicone of the Touchfire can attract cat hair, cracker crumbs, dust, and other such debris, although it cleans pretty easily. I also found that when folded up it looks a little creepy, like a leftover molted skin from a snake or an Alien, or something like that.

If you spend a lot of time in lecture halls or on airplanes or in other contexts with cramped seating, the Touchfire is great. Otherwise, you might get more mileage out of a physical keyboard. The Touchfire is so small that I used to travel with both the Bluetooth keyboard and the Touchfire, so I would have plenty of options.

Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover

I said I "used to" travel with two keyboards, because my newest iPad keyboard is the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover. This is a keyboard that also doubles as an iPad cover. It snaps into place as a cover using the iPad's built-in magnets. Then when you want to use it as a keyboard, the iPad fits into an angled slot.

Unlike the Apple keyboard, this has a proper hard-to-hit-accidentally sunken power switch. Since it's usually locked in place as the iPad's cover, it's also much less likely to inadvertently play music or drain your iPad batttery.

The keyboard/cover isn't cheap at $100, but you could easily pay that much for a separate Bluetooth keyboard and protective cover anyhow.

There are a few downsides, though:

First, the cover is made out of similar aluminum to the iPad itself and doesn't provide any protection for the device's back - and the keyboard/cover combination is too big for most cases. So if you often pack your iPad with other gear, you're likely to scratch and maybe even dent both the cover and the iPad.

Second, to be able to fit a full keyboard into the available space of an iPad cover, Logitech had to make the keys a bit smaller than a regular keyboard. Also, at the top left where I'm expecting either an ESC or a "1" key, Logitech has put a "Home" button - so when I'm about to type in a date like "December 11", I frequently end up leaving the app and going back to the iPad launch screen.

Third, the aluminum can dent relatively easily. A few days after getting mine, I dropped it on a hard floor, and while at least it didn't break it now doesn't fit quite so nicely anymore.

Lastly, because the iPad fits into a slot instead of resting on a stand, it doesn't work as well for transcription as the Apple keyboard/Origami combo.

]]>Facebook and App Crashes - And Some New StuffAndrew BurkeWed, 27 Mar 2013 18:18:36 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2013/3/27/facebook-changes-and-app-crashes50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:5153380ee4b0add7a94ca9d9Some people have found Remembary crashing on startup in the last few days. I've done some research and have discovered that Facebook has made some changes to their feed data format that break Remembary's feed reader. Facebook has a habit of introducing changes without telling anybody about them, and this looks like one of those situations.

I've fixed the problem and will be submitting the update to the App Store shortly. In the meantime, here's what you can do to keep Remembary from crashing:

Turn off internet access on your device. The easiest way to do this is to go to Settings and turn on "Airplane Mode".

Without internet access, Remembary will open without crashing. Go to the Feed Prefs settings (the 'four inward-pointing arrows' button in the toolbar) and switch to the 'Facebook' tab. Tap on the switch to turn Facebook fetch OFF.

Go back to your device settings and turn internet access back on again (turn "Airplane Mode" off).

Once you get the update next week, you'll be able to turn Facebook fetch back on again and everything should be fine.

I always feel disappointed when an app I use has an update and it turns out to only be a bug fix - so I'm also going to add some new fonts and themes to this new version. The new fonts are:

Marion Italic

Gill Sans Light

Chalkboard

Baskerville Semi-Bold

There will also be three new themes: "Gradus Light", "Gradus Dark", and "Gradus Mono". There's been a recent trend away from densely-textured realistic-looking "skeuomorphic" looks (which Remembary uses a lot) towards "flat UI". These aren't completely flat, but they don't have 3D looks and use simple gradients instead of textures.

For the technical-minded and curious: the 'checkins' feed from Facebook is supposed to have location specifications, which include name, address, and lat/long coordinates. Remembary uses these coordinates to put that checkin on its map. However, the new changes (unannounced and undocumented, as far as I can tell) will sometimes include just a text title for the entire location, often if it's a checkin at a custom event that doesn't have a specified location. Remembary was built to expect a complete data structure with coordinates, and in this case Facebook just gives it a single piece of text. This confuses the app enough to make it crash.

The fix simply makes sure that the returned value is actually a data structure, otherwise it skips trying to get a location for the checkin. I'm also adding better error handling so that if (when!) Facebook changes things again without telling anybody, it will simply skip funny data rather than crashing outright.

]]>Starting a Diary? 6 Tips for Getting Started (And How Remembary Can Help)Andrew BurkeMon, 31 Dec 2012 21:53:22 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/12/31/starting-a-diary-6-tips-for-getting-started-and-how-remembary-can-help50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:50e1fb0ee4b0c2f4976c9b8cThere are many reasons to keep a daily journal: a private place for your thoughts, a way to reflect on each day, a place for your future self to see what you were doing in the past, and even just great daily writing practice.

But many people have trouble starting a diary, and even more trouble keeping the daily habit. I’ve managed to keep a diary for almost a decade - and while it hasn’t always been easy, I’ve learned a whole lot. I put all of these lessons I’ve learned into my iOS diary app Remembary.

Here are some tips for getting into and keeping the diary-writing habit, and how you can use Remembary to get the most out of them. You don't need Remembary or even an iOS device for them to be handy, but I've included notes on how Remembary can help in each case.

1. Make it easy to write - anywhere and anytime

Any habit will be difficult to start and maintain if it's hard to do. Some people try to write only at a special desk, only in a special book, and with a special pen. This can be great for "getting in the mood" but it can lead to trouble if you're on a trip, or you've misplaced your special book or pen. Also, in these digital days, writing quickly and legibly with a pen is becoming a lost art. It's much better if you can get things written down quickly, any time and any where. Do you have some time on the bus or in a waiting room? If you have your diary with you, you can quickly write something down.

Remembary lets you write your diary anywhere you have your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. If you're on the road and have left your iPad at home, you can write on your iPhone and then transfer your entries back afterwards through DropBox or iTunes.

Remembary lets you type on the screen or with an external keyboard - if you're using more recent iOS devices, you can even dictate your entries with voice recognition. If you still like the look of handwritten diaries in handsome books, it has a dozen retina-grade themes and a wide choice of fonts, including Renaissance calligraphy and even a recreation of Jane Austen's handwriting.

2. Be private and personal for a change

With all the social media and online forms of expression available these days, we are in a golden age of writing about ourselves - but all of this writing is done in public. In a world of Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, it's still important to have a place to write exclusively for an audience of one: your own self. When you're writing in your journal, it's important to just write whatever you feel like, without worrying about who might be reading. Simply writing 100% honestly about your feelings or your ideas can help you work through them - and that's much more difficult if you're worried about who might be reading.

Make your diary your own, for yourself only. If you still like sharing your thoughts online, or are working on a memoir for when you become famous, consider your private diary to be a rough draft, but still keep it for your eyes only.

Remembary can be secured with a password, making sure that nobody else can see your diary. If you also lock your device with a passcode and also encrypt your backups, your digital diary is almost impossible to break into - certainly much safer than any physical one with a built-in lock.

3. Build a Chain of Days

Keeping a daily journal is, obviously, one of those habits that requires daily effort. Starting and keeping a daily habit can be very difficult, especially these days when so much in our lives is chaotic and unstructured.

One strategy that works really well for building daily habits is the "Seinfeld Calendar" where you mark each day when you've done your task and try to build as long a chain of days as possible. This gives extra weight to each day: you're not just missing a single day, but instead you could be breaking a chain of several weeks.

Any page-a-day diary will let you quickly see which days you've missed, but Remembary also has a calendar view that shows days with entries in green and days without entries in grey. This lets you see at a glance where you have gaps, and how long a "Seinfeld Chain" you've been able to build.

4. Use your social media and pictures to help remember what you did

If you have missed a few days in your journal, don't worry - and certainly don't give up! Just fill in the gaps as best you can as soon as you can. Even a short diary entry is better than nothing, and the longer a day stays empty, the harder it is to remember what happened.

These days, though, we have so many extra ways to remember what happened each day. Twitter, Facebook, blogs - all show what we were doing and thinking, timed to the minute. Every photo or video you take these days is likely to be timestamped to the second. Pictures and postings made from your phone are frequently geotagged, so you can even see where you were doing things, as well as when.

Even if you're writing out your diary on paper, you should use your computer or phone to help remember what you did every day. It's easy enough to forget just what happened in the morning, let alone several days earlier.

This is the feature that makes Remembary special: it's the only diary app that stores your life on your device. It automatically fetches your Facebook and Twitter feeds and lists your postings by day and time. It also automatically searches your photo library and even your Photo Stream to show you every picture you took each day. It even makes an instant map out of any geotagged pictures or tweets or Facebook checkins. The latest version also shows calendar events for each day too.

If you're in a rush, you can even fill in a quick overview of your day by tapping on tweets or status updates or events to copy the text directly into your diary, complete with a timestamp.

Some people who still like to write their diaries on paper still use Remembary just for the way that it collects all of the feeds in one place and helps them remember their days.

5. Enjoy looking back

While writing in a diary can be good for your mental health today, the greater value comes after you've been writing for a while and you can look back on what you've written earlier. Journal entries are like a letter to your future self, and reading back on your past is a great way to get perspective on your life.

Living your life in real time day by day, it's easy to get distracted by details and busy-work. Reading through several weeks, months, or years of a diary can help you see bigger patterns in your life and behaviour and emotions. What did you find important? How did your thoughts about people or things change over the years? How different was your day-to-day life? How have you changed?

Even if you're just starting the journal-writing habit, it's enlightening even just to look back on what you were doing and thinking a month or even a week ago.

Understanding how valuable what you write today will be to your future self is an extra motivation to keep writing every day.

I've put almost a decade of diary entries in my own copy of Remembary, and I've included many ways to browse through them.

The calendar display lets you jump around by month, but also includes buttons for quickly jumping to the exact same day one year in the past or in the future. It's fascinating to compare what I was doing on the same day every year, and Remembary makes it easy to do so. I also recently added a "Random" button, which jumps me to a random entry somewhere in my life - I like to cover the date and try to guess when it was written (or at least figure out the correct year!).

Remembary also has a scrollable, categorized list of all entries, including brief summaries of each day - just swiping through this can give a quick view of the big events in your life. You can also search in this list by any text that's in the diary or in the related feeds. You can even just type in parts of dates to see, for example, what you were doing every Friday.

6. Get help

While your diary should be private, your writing habit doesn't have to be. Get started writing with a friend and encourage each other to write. You can also get automated help: set an alarm or reminder to get you to write every day.

For Remembary, I set up a diary tips email plan to help you get started with diary-writing. Enter your email on the sign up page, and you'll get daily emails for a week, followed by several weekly reminders. These emails will give you extra tips for getting started with the diary-writing habit, regardless of whether you're using Remembary, another app, or writing on paper. Also please note that your address will only be used for diary tips - it won't be used for anything else or sold or transferred anywhere).

]]>Making Sure Pictures Work In RemembaryAndrew BurkeTue, 25 Dec 2012 19:37:41 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/12/25/making-sure-pictures-work-in-remembary50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:50da0089e4b00220dc6fc436Remembary's picture support is one of the things that makes it a unique and powerful diary app. In most cases, Remembary starts checking all of your pictures as soon as you start using the app, but sometimes things can go wrong. Here are some things to check to make sure that Remembary is getting pictures properly.

1. Make sure you have pictures on your device. Sometimes the iOS/iTunes photo sync doesn't work properly and sometimes the photo library just disappears. Simply take a look at the "Photos" app and make sure there are pictures in there. You can also take a look at Photo Stream to see if anything is coming through there. Remembary checks both the local photo libraries and your Photo Stream.

2. Make sure that Remembary has access to the photo library. If you're on iOS6, go to the "Settings" app, pick "Privacy", and then "Photos". You'll get a list of all apps that have access to the photo library. Make sure Remembary is on this list and make sure that the switch next to it is set to "ON". If you're on iOS5, access to the photo library is granted through "Location Services". This access is turned off if you selected "NO" to the access questions when you first started the app.

3. Make sure that Remembary is set up to receive pictures. Tap on the 'four arrows pointing inward' icon in the top bar to bring up the Fetch settings box and then tap on the "Auto-Fetch" tab Make sure that "Auto-fetch Photos and Videos" has been set to "ON". iOS has a bug in the photo library that can sometimes make Remembary crash if there aren't any pictures in the library - so now Remembary checks to see if it crashed the last time you were using it, and if it did it turns off the photo auto-fetch and displays an error message page.

4. If all of this has been set up correctly, try going to a date where you know you have photos in your device - a recent birthday or something like that - and see if pictures show up. It might take a while for them to appear if you have a big photo library (you'll see a little spinner to the right of the feed buttons while it's looking for pictures).

5. Go to today's entry and tap on the camera icon to take a picture directly from the app. Once the picture has been taken, it should show up in today's picture menu.

If you're still having trouble getting pictures to show up, please contact me with more details and I'll help you out personally.

]]>Making Sure Remembary is Connected to FacebookAndrew BurkeMon, 03 Dec 2012 13:21:24 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/12/3/making-sure-remembary-is-connected-to-facebook50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:50bca75ee4b05b20d2df6f8dRecent updates to Remembary have changed how the app connects to Facebook. Some people have reported having trouble getting connected.

Because iOS6 has Facebook authentication built-in but iOS5 doesn't, Remembary has to do a few tricky thing to make sure it works properly for everybody. There are several things to check to make sure Facebook is working properly:

1. If you're on iOS6, make sure that you have set up your Facebook account in the "Settings" app and that you have enabled Remembary.

2. If you're on iOS6 and have a Facebook account already set up in the "Settings" app, make sure that the "Use iOS Facebook Account" switch is set to 'On' in Remembary's feeds panel (the 'four inward-pointing arrows' button in the top bar).

2. If you aren't set up with an iOS6 system-level Facebook account, you'll see an "Authenticate with Facebook" button on that panel instead. If you're already authenticated, you should see a "Log Out of Facebook" button.

3. Go to the "Auto-Fetch" tab in the feeds panel and make sure the "Auto-fetch Twitter/FB/RSS Feeds" switch is set to "ON".

4. Sometimes, things just need to be refreshed. Try writing a new Facebook status update, then leave Remembary and come back to it - then flip to yesterday's entry and back to today's entry. Does the new status show up properly? You might also want to double-check your Facebook timeline and then go back to earlier dates in Remembary that should have status updates and see if anything shows up.

5. Note that Remembary only downloads Status Updates and Location Check-ins that have text in them. If you're just posting a picture without any comment, then it won't show up. Also, things like writing on other peoples' walls or liking a page etc. won't appear either.

]]>Remembary 2.0.3 Now AvailableAndrew BurkeWed, 21 Nov 2012 14:52:03 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/11/21/remembary-203-now-available50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:50acea9de4b079767f9a674bThe latest update to Remembary is now available in the App Store. This was supposed to be a quick fix to address some quirks found in 2.0.2, but I decided to take the time to fully upgrade the app to support iOS6, as well as the new iPhone5 and iPad Mini.

Here are some highlights:

All of the themes have been updated with 'tall' and 'wide' retina graphics to support the new iPhone5. All of the app's popups and panels have had their layouts adjusted to use the full height.

The bug that was preventing calendar events from showing up in iOS6 has been fixed.

Remembary now uses iOS6's built-in Facebook authentication. Note: The Facebook permission prompt asks for access to your 'friends list' - this is a requirement for the Facebook API but Remembary doesn't use it at all. It just uses your status updates and location check-ins.

Twitter has removed the ability to check unauthenticated accounts, so the freeform Twitter address field has been removed from the Twitter settings box. Now you can only use Twitter accounts that have been configured in your device's Settings.

There was a embarrassing bug that only showed up when during "Fall Back" daylight savings time adjustments, since it makes for a day with 25 hours. This has been fixed.

There is a bug in iOS6's (now patented!) implementation of the 3D page turn logic that sometimes makes it show the wrong page when the device is rotated. Remembary 2.0.3 has extra checks in place to catch this bug and fix it on the fly. You might notice brief flashes of the wrong page and layout when you rotate the device - but Remembary should be showing you the proper day's entry in the proper orientation.

For 2.0.2, I moved Remembary from the "Lifestyle" category to "Social Media". I'm not sure it entirely fit in there, and sales seemed to slow down a bit, so I've moved it back to "Lifestyle".

I'm also working on more updates and even a few surprises before the big diary-buying New Year's season. Look for 2.1 (or at least 2.0.4) soon.

Codex: Gives the impression of an antique tome with old weathered paper. This works nicely with fonts like "Tycho's Recipe" and "Jane Austen". The original version was designed by Nick Bolger, but has been reworked from scratch by Andrew Burke for the new version.

Daybook: This is descended from the original theme for Remembary, which used to be called "Planner". If you look closely at the pages in this theme, you can even see a watermark. The original was designed by Carol Clapham, but has been reworked from scratch by Andrew Burke for the new version.

Notebook: Carol Clapham designed the original version, but this has been thoroughly updated for the retina display with paper pulp, aging effects, and a photorealistic background. It now feels a bit like an old school notebook found in someone's attic.

Platinum: This is based on another Carol Clapham design. It's closely related to "Daybook" but has a more hard-driving "Executive" feel. The black leather and stitching were actually taken from a scan of a Targus iPad case.

Kids: This was designed by Brittney McIsaac, a Halifax-based graphic designer who has worked on a number of iOS apps over the years. Since Remembary is text-based, the margin doodles have to be built into the theme! The octopus in the top right corner might become Remembary's new mascot.

Lights Out!: Another Brittney McIsaac production, this is designed to be used at night if you're catching up on your diary after the lights have gone out and you don't want to disturb anybody.

Fathom: The original version was designed by Nick Bolger, but this has been thorougly updated for retina displays. The background wood pattern is actually from a wooden pier in Gros Morne, Newfoundland.

Heart: This uses the same basic ingredients as "Platinum" but reverses the aesthetic appeal. If "Platinum" was for the Corporate Raider in all of us, "Heart" is for the teenage girl in there too.

Paper: The original version was a quick stock photo adaptation from Lance Hancock (who also designed the cover page) which turned out to be an appealing favourite. It works surprisingly well with the "Andrew" and "Jane Austen" fonts.

Parchment: An original Carol Clapham design that only required small adjustments to work in the new Remembary. It looks vintage and like a stylized watercolour at the same time.

Circles: Another Carol Clapham design that didn't need many changes for Remembary 2. It strikes a nice balance between seriousness and whimsy.

]]>Remembary 2.0.2 Is OutAndrew BurkeMon, 22 Oct 2012 10:37:31 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/10/22/remembary-20250250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:508521eae4b066390d168377A small update to Remembary has just been approved to the App Store. I had actually submitted 2.0.1 a while ago, but while it was waiting for approval some other problems came up, so I canceled it and worked on 2.0.2 instead. It fixes some problems that came up with Remembary 2.0 and adds a few small features:

Fixes

- Some users didn't want to allow Remembary to access their Twitter accounts, but if they had a password on their diary they would get stuck in an endless loop of Twitter access requests that would just pop back to the password page again. It doesn't do this anymore. Also, there's now a switch in the "Auto-Fetch" box specifically to turn off Twitter.

- Exporting in 'Data' format would sometimes crash, especially if sending the export to an email or DropBox. It doesn't now.

- It's always been tricky to get the cell heights right for the feed items tableview, but the new logic for that is much better than it's been before. Big long Facebook posts should now fit just as well as single-word tweets, and nothing should be truncated anymore.

- The "Facebook" link in the help section now goes to the correct page (Like us!)

Updates

- If you're looking at a picture full-screen, tapping on it now hides the top bar, letting you see more of the picture. Tapping again or going to another picture shows the bar again.

- The 'copy feed item to diary' button icon isn't a grainy MS-Office-style 'copy' icon anymore, but is now a high-res arrow that should be more meaningful.

- The Facebook/Twitter/RSS icons in the feeditems listing are now all retina-enhanced.

Next Up

I'm already at work on Remembary 2.1. Software is always trickier than expected and schedules are difficult, so I can't say exactly when this will be out, but I'm hoping before the end of 2012, and I hope it will include:

Support for iOS6's built-in Facebook authentication.

Support for the new longer iPhone5 screen (and whatever new device they might announce later this week).

In-App purchase for new themes.

Thumbnails for Facebook and maybe Twitter pictures directly in the feeds.

'Recently Played Songs' as an (in-app purchase?) option in the feeds list, for people who make music their life.

FourSquare and perhaps App.net support.

Export to HTML, eBook, and perhaps PDF formats.

]]>Samuel Pepys and RemembaryAndrew BurkeMon, 15 Oct 2012 12:17:18 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/10/15/samuel-pepys-and-remembary50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:507bfed0e4b066c1cdd93a23Samuel Pepys was a smart and perceptive man who was lucky enough to have a prime vantage point during very interesting times. He kept a private diary for ten years, which happened to coincide with the restoration of the British monarchy, the Fire of London, the Great Plague of London, a war against the Dutch, and the rebirth of public theatre - not to mention his own rising fortunes from lowly clerk to senior naval administrator, speaking in Parliament, and being personally known to the King and other powerful aristocrats.

Pepys' diary was turned into a very popular daily blog, which turns out to have been an ideal way to read it. In fact, it was this blog that inspired me to start keeping my own daily diary (although my life is a whole lot less interesting than Pepys'). Keeping my own diary of course inspired me to make Remembary, so Pepys could be considered the grandfather of the app.

I built Remembary as a way to help me remember what I did because I haven't been very good at writing in my diary every day. I always had the impression that Pepys found time at the end of every day to write in his diary, and that my inability to do so was a sign that I was less organized than him, or a statement on our perhaps busier times. However, in one of the last entries in the diary, he writes:

So home, and by night home, and so to my office, and there set down my journal, with the help of my left eye through my tube, for fourteen days' past; which is so much, as, I hope, I shall not run in arrear again, but the badness of my eyes do force me to it.

A few months earlier, several days of diary entries just consist of short jot notes and some itemized spending.

So iIt looks like Pepys frequently took short notes while he was out and about during the day, and then fleshed them out into full diary entries when he had the time later on - sometimes a week or two later. This, it turns out, is exactly how Remembary works. Your tweets and status updates and pictures are all like Pepys' notes, which you can then use later on when you have the time to write up full diary entries.

So everything has come full circle: the app I built to help my own shortcomings in diary-writing turns out to reflect how Samuel Pepys actually wrote his diary. I'm sure Pepys would have loved to have an iPad - and with his active lifestyle you can be sure that he would have really enjoyed having an iPhone and a Twitter account.

Until recently, Remembary was an iPad-only app, so I didn't think it would be very useful out in the wilderness where wifi is scarce and plug-in power is scarcer. Earlier this year, I drove from Edmonton to Halifax, camping and hiking along the way. A few weeks later, I spent a week in Newfoundland's spectacular Gros Morne area. I had an early test version of Remembary for iPhone on both of these trips - and even in prototype form, Remembary totally changed the experience.

Whether I was walking among the hoodoos of Writing-On-Stone Park in Alberta, or scrambling up the scree face of Gros Morne Mountain in Newfoundland, I took a lot more pictures knowing that they would automatically become parts of my diary and would also show up on my map of the day. Every picture becomes a jog to my memory, and a point on a map to show my progress.

Writing in my diary in the tent at the end of the day was made much easier with the "Lights Out" theme, which was specifically designed to not dazzle you or anyone nearby in low light situations.

But I also found Remembary really useful while on the trail itself. The picture list and map view showed me where I had gone and when. By taking a picture of each wayfinding sign, I could see how long it had taken me to go measured distances, and so get a sense of how fast I was walking. Seeing the picture points over the satellite view gave me an instant birds-eye view of my progress and how much further I had to go.

Out in Gros Morne, I was often out of cellular data range, but I got around this by checking the maps where we were going to hike when I was in town and had wifi access. The iPad caches the map tiles, so they were available later on when I was on the trail.

I've made sure to keep the photo albums from my trips in my iPad's photo collection, so the picture are always available to Remembary. If I want to show people where I went on my trip, I often just hop over to the appropriate day in my diary and show them the map of where I went, tapping on the good pictures to show them in zoomable full screen.

I had a fun Twitter-based interview/chat on Sunday about Remembary, hosted by @OurManInMTL. We discussed my history of diary-writing, the difference between writing on paper and on a device, and how Remembary can be used for travel.

The audience made some great contributions - and two of them even won promo codes for a free copy of the app!

Paris, New York, Istanbul, San Francisco, Tokyo, Montreal, Rome, Rio, Sydney - there are few things better in life than having an open schedule and a whole new city to explore. Discovering history, checking out the monuments, appreciating the architecture, sampling the cuisine, and meeting the people - a new place can give you a wealth of new experiences, and can end up teaching you a lot about yourself as well.

If you like to write a lot in your diary, you'll probably prefer to use the iPad version of Remembary. However, you might not want to bring the large device with you as you walk around town all day. Stick an iPhone in your pocket or handbag, though, and you're good to go. The pictures and tweets and Facebook updates are all synced through the cloud and will already be waiting for you when you get back to your hotel at the end of the day and you write up your day's activities on your iPad.

Find some time at a café to get some writing done? You can still use Remembary's iPhone version for notes, or if you don't like typing (and nobody is nearby to get annoyed) you can use the voice dictation functionality. You can then export your day's entry out of your iPhone and import it into your iPad using DropBox. If you like that café and want to remember it for later, take a picture of it or check in to the location on Facebook - and it will show up with a timestamp on today's map.

Having Remembary has totally changed how I see a city. Knowing that my pictures and my tweets are going to show up in my diary makes me a lot more snap-happy than I already was before. Before Remembary, I would take a dozen or so pictures a day of a place. Now a big day in a new city can mean over a hundred pictures and map points. But it's all worth it when I can just tap on a button and see everywhere I've been.

Months or years after you've been to a place, you can quickly revisit the experience by simply going back to that day in Remembary. Not only is your diary entry there, but also all of the raw Tweets and Facebook updates that you made while you were experiencing it. All the pictures and videos you took are there too, available in full screen with just a few taps. If you want to see where something was taken, another tap shows it to you on a full-screen zoomable map.

]]>Travel With RemembaryAndrew BurkeFri, 07 Sep 2012 14:17:41 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/9/7/travel-with-remembary50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:504a0203c4aa917cbd4f8151The first time I ever kept a diary was on a cross-continent road trip I took in 1999. I started keeping a diary full-time a few years later, when I was flying between Toronto and California on a sometimes weekly basis. I felt like my life was changing so much that I needed to write it down before I lost track of everything. Many of the great diarists have also been great travellers, and one could argue that diaries are descended from or at least strongly influenced by ship's logs.

With its automatic picture and map support - and especially with the new extra-portable iPhone version - Remembary is an ideal travel companion. The next few blog posts will cover some of the different ways that people travel, and how Remembary fits in:

Road Trip

Eat up the miles and see it all from ground level. From winding back roads to superhighways, from rugged wilderness to tacky tourist traps - driving is a great way to see the world.

Keep your iPad or iPhone in the glove compartment and take quick notes whenever you make a stop.

When you're writing in today's entry in Remembary, you can tap on the clock icon in the right margin to add a timestamp. This lets you easily keep a 'log' of your day's travel while you're actually on the road. If you're using a recent model device, you can even use voice dictation to leave a quick note without having to type anything.

Want to remember that you were at a place? Take a quick snapshot with your GPS-enabled iPad or iPhone, and it will automatically show on today's map for you, complete with a timestamp. I've often found myself just taking a photo of the road just so I have an extra point for tracking my progress later on.

A good road trip can leave a really great map at the end of the day. Here is an automatic map from a recent visit I did to California - through the Redwood Empire and down some spectacular coastline along Highway 1.

]]>Join us for #remembarychatAndrew BurkeFri, 07 Sep 2012 13:52:17 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/9/7/join-us-for-remembarychat50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:5049fc0de4b026ebf3e3891dThis Sunday September 9th at 10am Eastern Time, follow #remembarychat on Twitter to join a conversation between @remembary and "Social Journeyman" and long-time friend @OurManInMTL. We'll be talking about the ideas behind the app, the benefits of the diary-writing habit, social media, epic road trips, and more.

The conversation will happen entirely on Twitter, and feel free to join in simply by tweeting at either of us and/or using the #remembarychat. Here are some of the questions we'll be covering - feel free to contribute your own.

When did you first start documenting your day to day experiences?

What are the barriers to being consistent with the diary experience?

Are there differences in writing on paper vs digital?

Tell us about the imputus to develop the Remembary App.

What are some fun moments or important moments you have in your Remembary diary?

Looking forward to the chat - and I hope people can join in. I know Sunday morning doesn't work for everybody, but if you miss the talk live just search Twitter for #remembarychat and you can see everything that was said.

]]>Remembary Upgrade Went (Almost) PerfectlyAndrew BurkeSun, 26 Aug 2012 02:05:50 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/8/25/remembary-upgrade-went-almost-perfectly50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:5039847ee4b00cf0e8cf385bThe Remembary 2 launch has gone pretty smoothly - especially considering that the app has been almost entirely rewritten and the upgrade process does a lot of data changes under the hood.

First, a big thank you to all of the people who have submitted such enthusiastic reviews to the App Store. After all the hard work that went into this latest version, it's heartening to see that people are enjoying it.

Also, a big thank you to everyone who has written in, either to say nice things or to point out problems they've been having (or both!) - in the last few days I've managed to identify two annoying bugs:

Twitter access request / password loop

If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Remembary and have a password on your diary, but you tell the app that you *don't* want to give it Twitter access when it starts, you'll end up stuck in an endless loop of entering your password and then being asked to allow Twitter access over and over again.

I've confirmed that this is genuine problem, and a fix for this will be coming soon, but in the meantime please note that:

Remembary only uses the Twitter accounts for *receiving* Twitter - it doesn't send anything, and certainly won't spam your followers or anything like that

You can turn off your Twitter accounts (and all feed fetches for that matter) from inside the app from the Feeds popup (the top bar button with all the inward-pointing arrows); and finally

You can turn off Twitter access at the OS level using the "Settings" app.

So, if you're finding yourself in this situation, just say yes to the Twitter account access for now so you can get into Remembary and then you can immediately turn off all Twitter access from the feeds popover if you don't want to be bothered with it.

Data Export to Mail Crash

If you try to send a "data" export of your diary in an email, the application will crash when it tries to pop up the mail interface. This doesn't happen with plain text exports, and also doesn't happen if saving the data export locally or to DropBox - just data exports going to email.

A fix for this is also on the way, but in the meantime you can save your data exports to DropBox or locally to your device, from which they can be copied to your computer the next time you plug it in.

Also note that Remembary saves a copy of the data export on your device before trying to send it in email - so your export hasn't been lost, you just have to plug your device into your computer and get the file out of iTunes.

I should have Remembary 2.0.1 ready to go early next week and it will hopefully be live in the App Store before Labour Day (depending on the approval process).

Thanks again to everyone for making this such a great upgrade and launch. Stay tuned - exciting things are coming soon!

]]>Remembary's FontsAndrew BurkeFri, 24 Aug 2012 08:29:06 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/remembarys-fonts.html50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf8dHere are some notes about each of the fonts. Several of the fonts are licensed from the the excellent (not to mention erudite) collection at Pia Frauss.

Bradley Hand: The original default font for Remembary. Looks like handwriting while maintaining legibility.

Jane Austen: is from Pia Frauss and is exactly what it sounds like: it's based on the actual handwriting of the famous author herself. It looks especially good on the "Paper" and "Codex" themes

Tycho's Recipe: Another Pia Frauss production - it isn't the most legible font, but it's quite striking, especially with all of the flourishes. It's based on an actual recipe by 16th century scientist Tycho Brahe, copied as a gift to the queen of Denmark - a recipe for a medicine "against Plague, and all Morbos Epidemicos". It looks great with the stylized antiquity of the "Parchment" theme.

Mitre Square: is also from Pia Frauss and is a fine example of late Victorian steel-tipped pen handwriting. The name comes from the part of London where Jack the Ripper used to lurk - the original version of this font comes from a police report about the murders. I like to use it with the "Codex" theme:

Andrew: is a cheerful-looking free font from Andrew Vardeman. I don't have much information about him or his font - but it's cheerful and a bit child-like. It looks great on "Notebook" or "Kids".

Noteworthy: is a newer 'handwriting' font built into iOS. It looks like it will be the font for the iOS6 version of the "Notes" app, which has some font snobs already calling it the new "Comic Sans". It looks nice in "Heart" and "Notebook".

Hoefler Text: is an old favourite. It has a distinctive, slightly old fashioned look, while actually being very technically sophisticated in its use of ligatures and such. It looks quite nice at a large size on the "Platinum" or "Daybook" themes.

Times New Roman Italic: One of the original six fonts that came with Remembary 1.0, there's really not much to say about Times New Roman Italic. It's handsome but stays out of the way.

Didot: An elegant serif font that Wikipedia describes as "neoclassical" and "evocative of the Age of Enlightenment". Several people had asked about having more straight serif fonts in Remembary, and I hope this and Hoefler Text give them what they want.

Underwood Champion: A licensed font based on actual old typewriter text, with a much more realistic, gritty feel. It looks really great on top of "Platinum" or "Daybook" pages.

Marker Felt: A fun font built into iOS - notable as the "Notes" app font.

Helvetica: The only font here with its own documentary.

]]>Remembary 2 Launches on August 22 2012Andrew BurkeFri, 17 Aug 2012 16:25:52 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/2012/8/17/remembary-2-launches-on-august-22-201250250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:502e708de4b0ad255981a870After almost nine months, Remembary 2 is finally ready. It just passed the App Store review process and I will be flipping the switch to make it live in the store on August 22.

This update is such a big deal that it deserves a celebration! If you're in or near Halifax, Nova Scotia on Wednesday afternoon, come by the Hub Halifax (1673 Barrington, 2nd floor) after 5:30 for the Remembary 2 launch party. You can just drop by, but if you're on Facebook, check in on the Event page. If you can't make it, you can follow the action on Facebook or Twitter.

I was proud of the earlier versions, but I really feel that this new version makes it one of the best diary apps on the App Store - and over the next few weeks I'm going to work hard to get the word out. This party is a way to start with a bang.

There will be snacks and beverages, demos of the app on iPad and IPhone, promo code giveaways, and maybe a few surprises.

]]>What's New in Remembary 2.0Andrew BurkeWed, 08 Aug 2012 16:28:22 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/whats-new-in-remembary-20.html50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7dRemembary 2.0 has been submitted to the App Store and should be available in a week or two.

Remembary 1.4.2 came out almost nine months ago, and if you're used to that version you're in for a treat. Here's what's new:

iPhone / iPod Touch Version: All of the functionality of the iPad version has been shrunk down to fit in your pocket. Note that some elements have been rearranged to fit the smaller device.

iBooks-style 3D page turn effects: you can still tap or swipe to move between diary entries, but the transition is a whole lot nicer.

Full Page Landscape Mode: The old 'split view' is gone - now Remembary gives you the full landscape width of the screen for reading and writing.

New and Redesigned Themes: All ten of the original themes from Remembary 1.4.2 have been redesigned for retina displays, the new 3D page flips, full-width landscape displays, and for the iPhone/iPod Touch. They take full advantage of the new iPad retina display, including paper textures, watermarks and photo-realistic backgrounds. There are also two new themes: the fun 'Kids' complete with doodles in the margins, and 'Lights Out!' which is designed for writing in your diary late at night.

New Fonts: Some new fonts have been added, including the cursive "Noteworthy" and the gritty typewriter "Underwood Champion".

Support for iOS' Built-In Twitter Accounts: Remembary automatically uses your device's built-in Twitter accounts and authentication. If you have multiple accounts set up in your device, Remembary will fetch tweets from all of them. This also means that Remembary can now support private Twitter feeds. You can download the entire available Tweet history for all of your accounts (up to 3500 Tweets each). You can still specify a Twitter feed manually if you want (although it will be cleared automatically if it's a duplicate of one of the iOS accounts).

Copy Feed Items to Your Diary: Each feed item now has a button that lets you copy the text and timestamp directly into that day's diary entry. This lets you quickly build up your diary without having to do any typing!

Feed Listing Filters: If you're a prolific twitterer or have a busy calendar or track busy RSS feeds, you can now filter your feeds listing by feed type from a segmented control at the top of the listing.

iCal Events: Remembary now searches through your device's iCal events and automatically includes entries in the appropriate day's feed listing. You'd be surprised how far back your events are stored in your device! This even works with iCloud sync, so (for example) if you add or change an event on your computer or iPhone, it will show up automatically in your iPad.

Better Facebook Feeds: Facebook status updates that have a location specified will now show up on the map interface. Also, Remembary doesn't anonymously import comments left on your wall by other people anymore (which can get confusing on your birthday!).

Photo Listing Filters: If you take most of your pictures with your iPhone or iPad and also use Photo Stream, you often end up with the same pictures showing up multiple times in your listing. Now you can filter the listing to only show pictures from the local photo library or from Photo Stream.

Auto Fetch Settings: Now that Remembary even works on the iPhone 3GS, all of the different fetches can slow down the app's performance, especially if you have a lot of photos or very busy feeds. You can now turn off any or all of the feed fetches if you want. Turn them all off and Remembary is still a really nice-looking diary app.

Calendar Interface: Instead of just a list of entries, Remembary now has a full browsable calendar view. Dates with diary entries show up in green, so you can easily see how well you've been keeping your diary. The calendar panel also includes buttons for jumping to the earliest or latest entry, one year forward or back, or even (very cool!) a random diary entry.

New Photo Interface: The new full-screen picture and video viewer is more responsive, showing a low-res version while the full version loads. You can now swipe left and right to move between your photos. If your photo / video is geotagged, you can see where it was taken on a full-screen map.

New Map Styles: All map displays now let you pick between street style, satellite imagery, or a hybrid of both.

Data Export and Import: You can now export your diary in a data format that can then be imported back into Remembary later on. This is especially handy if you're using Remembary on multiple devices - you can export and export through DropBox, for example.

Improved Performance: Extra indexes have been added to the database to dramatically improve feed item fetch speed. Processing-intensive operations like photo library lookups or RSS feed downloads now happen mostly in background processes so they don't interfere with browsing and typing.

]]>Remembary 2 Preview: Quick Guide GraphicAndrew BurkeSun, 05 Aug 2012 16:44:07 +0000http://remembary.com/blog/remembary-2-preview-quick-guide-graphic.html50250884c4aa57fbd9c1d020:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf7b:502508d5e4b06b89cde1cf91Well, the coding and testing for Remembary 2.0 are all wrapped up. Now I'm just putting the finishing touches on the built-in documentation for the app. I'll be posting all of this on the web as well. Here's the anchor of the first page: the quick guide graphic (featuring the 'Platinum' theme):

Here's the iPhone / iPod Touch version, showing the new "Underwood Champion" font and the new version of "Notebook".